Evaluating Maatta in 2017 by @commaolivia

There was a time when it seemed like Maatta’s future in
Pittsburgh was as bright as a fresh sheet of ice.

After an impressive start to
his career during the 2013-2014 season, playing 78 games as a 19-year-old rookie,
Maatta would ascend the ranks, taking his rightful place on the blue line as Kris
Letang’s defensive partner. Maatta would inherit Paul Martin’s spot, and the
Penguins wouldn’t have to worry about their top defensive pair for the better
part of a decade.

How high was the ceiling for a player who had shown so much
potential?

What more could anyone want?

But now in Maatta’s fourth professional season, it's clear
that things haven’t gone exactly to script, especially considering the
injuries, illnesses, and all-around bad luck that have impacted Maatta’s life
and development. Despite these setbacks, it seems fair to suggest that not only
do we know where Maatta’s ceiling might be, but also that we have already seen
it — we have likely seen him play the best hockey he is capable of. And while it remains
possible that Maatta might regain the level of play he exhibited in his first
few years, it seems unlikely at this point that he would much surpass those levels.

In the short term, the best thing the Penguins could do for
Maatta would be to ensure that he doesn’t see another shift with Trevor Daley.
Daley, who is himself struggling to regain the level of play the
Penguins came to expect from him last year, has been a defensive nightmare with Maatta. In
over 300 minutes together this season, Maatta and his most common partner have a
45.6% corsi-for percentage (CF%) and have managed a corsi-against per 60 (CA60)
of 65.21. To put that in perspective, when the Maatta-Daley pairing is on the
ice together this season, the Penguins are giving up nearly 14 corsi attempts more per 60 minutes than
they did with Maatta on the ice last season.

A better plan might be to reunite Maatta and Letang, at
least until Brian Dumoulin returns from his jaw injury. Although the Letang-Maatta
pairing hasn’t been as good together this year as they have been in previous
years, their fairly substantial body of work together — over his career, Maatta
has seen more ice time with Letang than any other defenseman — suggests that
playing Maatta with Letang puts Maatta in a solid position to bounce back and
regain his form. Evaluating every season that Maatta and Letang
have been paired with one another, we find that the duo put up their best defensive numbers
last year, indicating that regaining success isn’t entirely out of reach.

For now, Maatta can be successful — it’s just probably not possible
with Trevor Daley (or Steve Oleksy, for that matter).

With that in mind, when considering what to do with Maatta
in a more long-term sense, the Penguins have a few things to untangle from each other:

(1) How much of Maatta’s reputation as a young, high-end
defensive prospect has he retained, thus perhaps inflating his value on the trade
market?

(2) To the degree that future performance can be predicted,
what is the likelihood that Maatta regains and sustains the highest levels of
play the Penguins have seen from him?

(3) To what degree is the promise that Maatta once held
impacting the team’s own evaluation of his future performance?

(4) When considering the price teams are willing to pay for
Maatta, is his play worth more to the Penguins than any return they could
possibly get?

The Penguins won’t be forced to trade high-end defensive
prospects. There’s no mandate that says that young, cost-controlled players
must be moved near the deadline for older ones, or that the Penguins must
decide that they no longer require the services that Maatta and/or Derrick Pouliot
offer. But if the Penguins are looking for blue line help — something they might
consider doing given the team-wide struggle with shot suppression this season — and
if they are looking to trade one of Maatta or Pouliot to get it, careful
consideration of Pouliot’s stats might suggest that he is a better bet for the
Penguins to make long-term, despite persistent narratives that have emerged
around both players that suggest the opposite.

If the Penguins must make a move, then they should try to exploit an over-valuation of Maatta’s worth (to the degree that any such perception
exists), as this would well position the Penguins to bring back a solid return at the
trade deadline.